vidia's shadow

it is 1 am, monday. 48 hours have passed since i spent a couple of hours in sir vidia’s shadow. i find, now, that this time has been necessary, and important, for me to digest the act of listening to vidiadhar surajprasad naipaul. it isn’t everyday, after all, that one shares a room with a man many refer to as the world’s greatest living writer of english prose.

on friday night, i watched as v s naipaul held an audience firmly in his grasp. i assume the people comprising that audience left with all kinds of feelings. a lot must have been happy simply to have him sign their copies of his latest book, magic seeds. some must have strolled passed with curiosity, wondering who the short, greying man was and why there were so many people listening to him. a fairly large percentage must have been completely put off at what has now grown to be recognised as quintessential naipaul behaviour.

the 48 hours that lie in between have led me to a more charitable conclusion. i realise that, if i were to win a nobel prize worth £644,000, i’d be a little difficult to deal with too.

vs naipaul may very well be the greatest living writer. what he does equally well, however, is manage to annoy a large number of people with consummate ease. he has, at various times in the past, spoken of gandhi’s failure in south africa, claimed that indians were not intellectual enough to read his books four decades ago, referred to the writer e.m. forster as a homosexual exploiter and described u.k. prime minister tony blair as a cultural philistine. definitely not crowd-pleasing material.

and then there was friday.

the room filled fairly quickly, well before naipaul made his entrance. were they all familiar with his work? did they come simply because nobel laureates have the ability to draw crowds? i haven’t a clue. i simply sat and soaked it all in.

naipaul entered, lady nadira in tow, and stepped up to a podium, sharing space with a minor essayist called farrukh dhondy and an old friend of mine, rehaan engineer. dhondy talked about how he called naipaul in london when he heard about the latter winning the nobel. naipaul, apparently, said, “ah, you’ve heard about my little spot of good luck.” everyone laughed.

to cut a meandering speech short, dhondy wanted us to know that naipaul wasn’t a cantankerous old man, that he could be persuaded to write more books (he had told a delhi audience, a day before, that this was his last), and that it was important for readers to go back the books before arriving at opinions about his worth as an author. and then, the nobel laureate and his wife held centre stage for ‘questions and answers’. which is when i really began to enjoy myself.

question one came from a young woman on my right: “why do you call magic seeds a fast-paced novel compared to your earlier work? is it because the world we live in, with information technology and the like, prompted you to pick up the pace?”
naipaul’s reply: “this is what i mean about people asking me questions without having read my books. these questions are being asked simply to provoke me.”
lady nadira’s gentle remonstration: ‘no one’s provoking you.”

more -- why did you want to do a reading here? “so people know what i do for a living.”

is your work autobiographical, and will you consider an autobiography at some point? “most indian novels fail because the authors get too autobiographical (applause). i once thought of writing an autobiography, but realised it would overwhelm me. i couldn’t possibly have done it.”

naipaul was sometimes acerbic, often condescending, and always witty. he took on all kinds of queries, replied to some with astonishing insight, to others with barely disguised scorn. when someone asked him what he called home, he asked him to look up his books for a reply. when another praised his appearance on the bbc talk show hard talk, he replied: “in the programme, the subject walks away knowing very little of what’s going on, but i’m glad some people got something out of it.” yann martel and j.k. rowling were dismissed with a peremptory reference to today’s novels “about tigers in boats, little wizards and the like.”

someone then asked about his india trilogy -- an area of darkness (1964), india: a wounded civilization (1977) and india: a million mutinies now (1990). coming as he had in the throes of an election, did he think india had changed since then? the writer thought for a moment, then said, “if i were to concentrate on current events and do a sequel, that would only be journalism.” he was then reminded of the hurt caused to indians by the views expressed in the trilogy. “i was very concerned by that reaction,” said naipaul, softly, “because i had no desire to hurt.”

questions done, it was time for the faithful to get their copies of magic seeds signed. the man in front of me held up a copy of an area of darkness. he was refused. “only the current book,” insisted nadira. i sympathised with the man for four seconds, then promptly forgot him as naipaul signed my copy.

as i walked away, leaving the rest struggling around the table, arms and books outstretched, there were other feelings. i remember naipaul referring to the fact that a writer is, at the end, “not his work, but his myth.” i left, thinking about the way he handled the audience. i saw, later, that it was the myth that dictated most reactions towards him, not his remarkable body of work.

sir vidia was awarded the nobel prize “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.” it was that incorruptible scrutiny that demanded attention, that compelled him to ask his audience to look up the work first.

a large portion of everything naipaul has written has to do with a quest for identity. the enigma of arrival, for instance, examines the identity of the immigrant in england and destabilises it. in half a life, the protagonist willie chandran tells himself, “i don’t ever want this view to become familiar. i must not unpack. i must never behave as though i’m staying.”

to ignore the work and concentrate on public appearances would be to lose sight of what the man has really been saying for decades now. and yes, if they simply refused to get the point, you’d be annoyed with your audience too.